While watching “The Jane Austen Book Club” last night (and yes, I have read the book as well and no, I have not read all of Jane Austen) I came across a line that really stuck with me. One of the characters was asked if her husband had read Jane Austen and she replied (rolling her eyes), “He reads stuff online” as the other women laughed derisively. Is this just something that’s always going to be an issue with book “purists” or is there a true difference between reading online content and “paper” content?
In addition, I find reading online to be a skill in and of itself - scanning a screen and being able to filter out the unnecessary material on a page, scrolling, being able to maintain focus on the content, etc. As we venture into more e-learning and more and more online content I believe this is a skill that we should work on with our students. Rather than just telling them to go read something online, we should first treat it as an additional reading skill. At the moment, I’m attempting to work out where this best fits in the Framework for 21st Century Learning - your thoughts and theories are welcome!
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills - Framework for 21st Century Learning via kwout
Note - I really enjoyed the movie (yes, I cried) and found it to be different from the book, but not negatively so.
Additional Reading
The Jane Austen Book Club movie trailer on YouTube
21st Century Learning Standards - Cathy Nelson
Four Charts - Scott McLeod
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree - online reading is a skill that needs to be taught to learners today. My ‘Y’ generation son hates online learning, he says it is confusing, sometimes the writing is too small, he gets lost with the links etc. Sometimes I prefer a book, so I can highlight it, write notes, turn down the page corners etc (I know librarians hate that) but treating a book this way means I am digesting the contents!
Yet there is whole heap of stuff I read online that I feel no need to have a print copy of.
Marie
Marie » I often prefer books as well, mostly because of the portability and fact that they can’t be ruined quite so easily by small children! I find value in online reading but find some of the same problems that your son has - I wish I would have had more of a guide instead of having to learn this skill on my own as an adult.
I find reading on a screen to be a different activity too. I use diigo to highlight and annotate and mark up a page, but it’s still not the same. I find that I’m less patient with the screen (maybe it’s the glare), and I rely on images more than I do when reading paper. It also seems that writing with a pencil helps me remember that I actually wrote something in the margins; diigo not so much.
Have you seen Andrew Churches’ recasting of Bloom’s hierarchy for digital skills? Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/6a32cv. At the lowest level he has several skills that have to do with sorting out what’s going on on a page. They don’t look like just basic text reading in an online environment, but maybe they’ll give you some ideas.
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